PS5 Pipped by Nintendo Switch to Be UK's Best-Selling Console of 2022

I have no idea who is still buying GTA 5, but there it is!

Not surprising, even as an aging system, it's relatively cheap and has a good variety of games. Though I wish Nintendo would sell their games at a discount more often. I appreciate the PS store for that. This generation is the first where I'm mostly a digital gamer..

These Lego games sell like crazy. The Lego company is very profitable, making so much right. Glad to see that also the quality of the games deliver.

@Titntin I bought it for the 4th time last year unfortunately 😔

It is I, I'm the reason why there is no GTA VI

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika
That is becoming a mystery now about PS5 not being in stock, in the run up to Christmas and right now GAME UK have stock and so do Smyths toys.
Argos a bit on and off with stock.
I purchased two disc ones over the late Christmas period and can buy one right now.
I think PS5 stock issues are sort of over now.

Interesting that Red Dead 2 is on there.

It was fun while it lasted, but clearly PS5 in the UK is doomed now. @Dezzy70 has found some on shelves. Game over, man, game over.

I am sure at the end of this year(2023) the PS5 will be top Well done Nintendo tho. It seems you don't need or have to rely on all those 3rd party AAA games to sell game consoles to. Maybe SONY shouldn't be scared of Microsoft getting Activision this year then

so going by those figures 60% of the market is digital now

The switch is a nice little machine, but I rarely touch it. Got some games for it in the sales so I can give it some love. PS5 reigns supreme though, got plenty to play and 2023 is full of potential bangers that I have my eye on and probably some I don't!

The Switch is an amazing system IMO. There are literally hundreds of games that appeal to me and the quality of some of the ports are nothing short of miraculous.

I'm quite surprised that PS5 hardware sales are down year on year. I've definitely seen a huge improvement in availability and would have thought that the 2021 numbers would have been more heavily impacted by the chip shortages.

@NEStalgia
I never meant it like that.
I meant it more it’s a mystery to me how on here and other sites people say it is out of stock in the UK can’t find a PS5 and within 1 minute of searching on the internet I find some in store and online for home delivery.
Perhaps if people new how to use the internet they might find stock.
You could say I’m being helpful by letting those people that can’t find stock telling them exactly where there is some and at what stores.

@NEStalgia
Don’t you find it funny especially in the UK when the PS5 isn’t the top selling console for the week, month or year the brigade appear claiming no stock. Then I find some in seconds online and in store. Solo disc and GOWR bundles Funny that isn’t it. Thing is I can’t lie as these people can go check at the stores I say they are in stock.
Especially Smyths Toys UK. You can look if you want. In store and home delivery. It is simple to get a PS5 in the UK, which is good for the consumer of course and the console.

Interesting to see that, although Nintendo games have been dominating the physical sales charts, they didn't do so well digitally, as many have been arguing for quite a while now.

@Carl-G Unlike Ninty, Sony relies heavily on third party games

Only Nintendo could combine the legacies of the two worst-selling platforms of the 2010s and wind up with one of the most successful gaming platforms of all time, lol.

Love my Switch to death.

I love the Switch but 2022 was a lean year for it. Really looking forward to new Zelda this year though.

I played less than 20 hours on my Switch last year. Looking forward to Zelda.

@Dezzy70 Yeah, I was just ragging on you for the constant "it's on shelves, so it's failing to sell!" meme

For the UK it sounds like you're right, at least at the moment, though I can't disagree with the "no stock" people either. For the US, I just checked all the major stores (Best Buy, Gamestop, Walmart, Target) which, for all practical purposes are our ONLY stores that sell consoles, and not one of them has them available for online delivery at all (and has not generally done so at any point post launch), Target and walmart don't have them at all. Gamestop does not ship them but does them in-store only...no stores near me have it (but they email periodically about stores getting them, but it's all in-store I guess.)

Best buy doesn't ship them, but shows they "have" them with a reservation process still like it's launch day (but may or may not have them in my store, not that I care )

But yeah, int the US, the no-stock people would be right. I have zero ability to order one online, and I don't believe any in-store ability either. PS5 is still non-existant unless you win a lottery on the right day I'd say. Which is INSANE over 2 years past launch.

XSX is the same, so it's not just a Sony issue.

@NEStalgia
See I can’t vouch for the USA and stick with the UK. Actually the UK does extremely well for all the consoles, sometimes the PS5 can be harder to find.
It’s does make me laugh how Xbox series s and x is in stock in its thousands in the UK but the USA as you say it isn’t in stock.
To me that is poor console distribution by Microsoft and shows their lack of focus internally all round.

@naruball Looks like the games sales figures from Nintendo don't include digital numbers. Seems Nintendo don't supply them

@Dezzy70 True, though the same could possibly be said for Sony where they have some availability in the UK, where they're the default winner, but not in the US where they're fighting against a strong Microsoft..... more probably goes into distribution including costs and travel time, docks/mooring schedules, canal movements, etc.

I have a feeling that the UK that has a lot of different stores still that probably go through distributors is probably a big part of the difference. In the US there's literally 4 stores plus Amazon that never gets them and stores like Costco that are membership-clubs that do sell them, but generally, 4 major retailers so the whole shipment goes to one store that everyone watches and they sell out in an hour or two still, probably before the shipment even arrives to them. It might be that plenty more of both of them are available here but the "ultra" efficient logistics model here means they go from docks to sold in moments rather than spending any time at all available. Not saying that's a good thing...but it might be a big difference. You guys aren't so tied up in a total of 5 retailers that are all their own distribution system as well.

But I still can't comprehend that even as demand has softened, over 2 years past launch the product still doesn't even exist here for either company in the biggest market!

At this rate Nintendo doesn't need new hardware until 2025.

Meanwhile VR2 they can't seem to give away...

@Ralizah The Wii U, yes. But the 3DS sold almost 76million. How is that one of the two worst selling platforms of the 2010s???

@__jamiie I was wondering the same thing. I guessing her rationale is 76 million is bad for Nintendo. It's a decent drop from the DS.

@NEStalgia
I see it 2023 like this:

Nintendo only have to go here’s BOTW2 GOTY 2023 a bit of good PR and special console.
Mario movie out and Pikmin 4 and that probably the best selling console of 2023 wrapped up.

Sony go here’s PSVR2 I know niche but it’s their PR that gets the brand noticed and their you go have Spider man 2 for end of 2023, bring it on, maybe pip Nintendo to best selling console.

Here come Microsoft, ok yes we have this Xbox thing and game pass, we doing much PR this year, we gonna release top AAA games, er well let’s have a few high profile meetings then fanny around for a bit, maybe see how our studios are doing, let the other two get an amazing head start to the year 2023, then we might do something.
Let’s have another meeting instead 😂😂😂

@__jamiie PS Vita. Manufactured by a different company, of course, but I'd argue the Switch very much carries on its legacy and realized a large extent of its wasted potential as a platform.

@Dezzy70 I go on and off about preordering VR2. I just feel like it's guaranteed to get a price drop because sales are just not going to be strong at all at that price in this economy. The fact that it's not sold out yet whole consoles are non-existent and they didn't even have many of them planned at launch says a lot.

But yeah, I can see old Switch still being at the top, and honestly only Spider man 2 has a chance of breaking the streak. XB...well, if they end up owning King, Wow, and Cod they'll be laughing all the way to the bank. They'll have 1 bn for every PSwitch sold! I'd love to be in last place with that kind of income

@Ralizah It says a lot about how poorly PS Vita went down when not one of us, even among us ardent Vita zealots, even thought of the Vita at all when you said "2 worst selling"....X1, X360, PS3, PS4, DS, 3DS, WiiU, Wii.....yep, that's all of them!

Poor thing is so dead even I don't remember having had it unless someone specifically says Vita or Gravity Rush... And I was just looking at it yesterday...

@Titntin i bought the PS5 one on PS store. Only cost me 8 quid an i’d not played it since PS3. My kids love it!!

@Ralizah PS Vita, Xbox One, Switch, Wii U all sold less than 3DS in the 2010s.

Nintendo released 3 consoles in the 2010s. You didn't specify Nintendo only consoles. You said THE worst selling consoles of the 2010s. The 3DS is far away from being the worst console of the 2010s.

I'm also sure that the PS3 and Xbox 360 were selling less than 3DS during that time.

@NEStalgia It's alright. The Wii U and Vita might have been laid cold by the PS4, but their malformed offspring clawed its way out of hell to end the God King's iron grip on Consolelandia.

@__jamiie Correct. Which is why I specified that I wasn't talking about the 3DS.

@Ralizah Wait, I thought Vita was PS4's Wii WiiU GamePad?

@NEStalgia The poor Vita didn't even work particularly well as a remote play accessory for the PS4, lol. At least, not in my experience, despite troubleshooting and doing all the things to make it work smoothly.

@NEStalgia
PSVR2 is a bit niche I’m not getting one.
Unless I can have a good go on one for say an hour and few of the games to be sure.
Yes very highly priced, especially with the current cost of living climate.

@NEStalgia @Dezzy70 vr2 was never going to sell out.

but with 30mil ps5 sold, Sony cant sell 2mil vr2 they said they had for launch.

probably looking around 5% uptake. just shows will stay niche until at least vr3

@stvevan
I think it’s a nice add on to have if you fancy it and have the extra cash. It definitely is not a general public big seller thing.

@stvevan Yeah, I did think early adopter numbers might push it, but apparently not. I do think it still bodes for a price cut. I know for the tech it's an ok price, but not for a market not into spending on niche right now. I'm not convinced vr3 will happen at all if vr2 isn't highly successful, but at least we get this one to enjoy before zuck owns the vr metaverse completely 🙄

@Dezzy70 Yeah, I'm definitely getting it eventually, I liked vr1 a lot but really felt it's limitations that 2 very likely fixes. But that price..... And the fact that it's almost certain to drop. And that last time early adopters got screwed when the updated hdr friendly model released for less money. I'm very hesitant at launch... And that's all a lot of money for something I'll only occasionally use.

@Ralizah Oh I know it! Remote play was one of my most anticipated features. But in reality it was... Well....

Though much of that (other than missing half the critical buttons) is Sony's horrible client software. Their RP is STILL horrible on Android, but thankfully a paid third party app makes it work perfectly. That's just depressing.

Nintendo Switch outsold ps4 and gameboy/gameboy color WORLDWIDE!

Crazy all 3 were so close when you consider Nintendo and xbox had a fairly quiet year in 2022 for game releases. Interesting

@NintendoEternity and it only took how many years ? theres a lot of kids worldwide too so its no surprise a handheld/DS 2.0 sold so well honestly

@Ralizah the one thing I used my Vita for constantly was remote play. Worked so well for me, I still use it to travel and play games on the plane and stuff. Laggy as hell these days but I love it

@TeapotBuddha lol! Thanks for making me chuckle 😂

@nomither6 That's less years than the Gameboy sales life or the PS4's sales life though. And it's still not done yet. It already surpassed those two, the question is now if it can surpass Wii or PS2, and it has a chance.

The "kids" mantra is outdated. Nintendo's own demographic data shows the bell curve of their user base centers around the 21-41 year old bracket or so. Their own marketing for Switch has centered around the jet-setting millennial crowd from the start. Sure, kids are more likely to have a Switch than a PS5, but apparently 30-somethings are more likely to have a Switch than a kid, so...

@NEStalgia
the ps4 had to be basically discontinued, let’s lump in ps5 sales since the switch gen-leaped twice somehow

& nintendo has been for kids since the gamecube and advertise themselves as such ; it’s not outdated at all when their design philosophy and games are aimed at kids and are childish . it doesn’t matter how many adults play their games , literally doesn’t change the fact that we’re not their target demographic . that’s like saying disney movies aren’t for kids , because adults buy the tickets and watch it too .

@nomither6 only less than 6 years compared to ps4 being out for 9 plus years. That's very Impressive!

@nomither6 ps4 pro is still selling

@nomither6 It's just the raw lifetime sales for the product, the year end dates don't have to match up. Total number of PS4's sold, total number of GB/GBC sold, total number Switch sold. No sense adding PS5 sales to PS4 or 3DS sales to Switch, it's just total Switchs vs total PS4s sold. 2013-2021 for PS4, 2017-202X for Switch, in pure numbers Switch sold more units in less years than the number of units PS4 sold in it's total years.

To be fair to PS4, it's numbers would probably have gone higher had they not announced their "shift" to focus on PS5 2 years before they launched PS5, and started staying quiet about some tentpole games they were holding until after the PS5 reveal (namely HFW & GoWR). Sales on PS4 and X1 cratered right after the successors were announced to the point retailers were lamenting the announcement as it killed sales for a year and a half. I think X1X was starting to draw too much attention and MS could have sat on it for a while before announcing a successor, and Sony announced PS5 early to halt that, an easy calculated risk that made for a weird few years. Regardless of why though the numbers land where they do. Without that maybe PS4 could have gone to PS2 numbers. But it didn't.

The whole Nintendo is for kids thing was Sega marketing in the 90's. Then Sony picked up the Sega marketing angle as well. They definitely make a lot of "family games" and cornered the market, and that's a lucrative market, but it doesn't define the platform. They also make adult games (Xenoblade is plenty heavy, Bayonetta is definitely not for kids, Eternal Darkness on GCN definitely not, etc. )

It's just a bias. "Nintendo only makes kids games" just because that's what they're most famous for, it's where competitor's marketing has defined them for a long time, and because during their bad years, they lacked the third party support to have rounded platforms.

Ironically Nintendo's player base tends to skew older. They have the market cornered on the aging gamer and sell infinite nostalgia for infinite money, while the traditional "teen" market only cares about PS and XB and CoD/Fortnite/GTA.

For Switch specifically it has multiple core markets. Kids, sure. But also, indie game fans, Japanese game fans (there's a lot that's not on PS, is equal on Switch and PS, or is actually better on Switch than PS (Hello Trails from the Zero!) - and the little issue that "not for kids" Playstation started censoring Japanese content while "kiddie Nintendo" goes pretty much full beach volleyball edition now...), anyone that likes the idea of a portable console for any games including Doom, Civ, Diablo, Witcher, etc), including people that travel a lot, which includes pretty much the whole former PSP/Vita market since PS exited. Just the convergence of those markets alone should show why it would have such sales success. Take all of Sony's old handheld business in Japan alone and that's some decent numbers. There's just no way around that it's a machine that fits multiple markets that together are a pretty big market. One that's still growing. Add in that it's actually been almost continuously available while both PS/XB have been spottily available for the past 3 years.....there's really no disputing where the numbers land and why.

There's also the "budget/casual" gamer market which....it's true, their low cost of entry DOES pull that market in, though I'd give you that it's a fallacy, Nintendo TCO is always higher than PS/XB if you actually buy games, and with XSS they don't even have the lowest barrier to entry mantle currently. But it people do BELIEVE that they're cheaper.

Just seeing how many PS5 players on Push also play Switch
should give some clue as to how broad its market is. I think half or more of the regulars here are also Switch owners. Not coincidentally many were also PSP/Vita owners.

@NintendoEternity I'm pretty sure they discontinued PS4 Pro early on in the PS5 era, and they stopped officially counting base PS4 numbers I think last year despite still making some. Which is fair. But Switch doesn't even have a planned EOL yet, it's still running full steam and racking up sales. I still don't think it'll match PS2, BUT if BotW2 comes out and does NOT cross-launch on yet to be announced hardware, I think it does have a chance at taking #1.

Edit: I originally said they discontinued PS4 Pro early in the PS3 era because maths is hard!

@Dezzy70 I just read the stock issues are now a thing of the past but last year still wasn't that great to get one. But i hope it's really available for everyone but the sales will be lower now because people can finally go what they want no more lockdown. These gold days for the console/pc/games will not be this big as they where before for a long time.

@Flaming_Kaiser
Yes my local has 10 GOWR disc bundles and 5 disc solo PS5 console. Though the solo sells out quick still, but nowhere as quick as say mid 2022.
It take us about 2 weeks to sell 15 PS5 disc solo now instead of one day, in mid 2022.

Series s and x you could build a castle with the amount of those we have, slow selling.

Switch, always have lots of various Switch models but they sell well at a steady pace.
Switch will get a boast when the BOTW2 special edition console releases in May.